Meri Mion was a 13-year-old girl when fighting between the invading German soldiers and the liberating US Army broke out in a nearby village, San Pietro in Gù, Italy, in April 1945.
She spent the night hiding with her mother in the attic of their farm. Retreating Germans fired shots near her home, memories that haunted her for years. She awoke the next morning, with the US Army’s 88th Infantry Division nearby.
Her mother had prepared a birthday cake for her. Fresh from the oven, the cake was placed on the windowsill.
“Her happiness turned into disappointment later when the resourceful American soldiers made off with her birthday cake,” Colonel Matthew Gomlak, commander of US Army Garrison Italy told a ceremony in Vicenza, a city in the Veneto region of northeast Italy, where 90-year-old Meri was handed a new birthday cake.
Meri was the guest of honour at the event at Giardini Salvi, very close to where the 88th Infantry Division fought its way into the city on 28 April, 1945, during World War II.
A beautiful gesture by the US Army, making amends after all these years.
